Boston Tea Party
Colonists in Boston boarded three ships and destroyed their cargo of East India Company tea in the harbour, in protest at the Tea Act, which had given the Company a privileged route into the American market while retaining the duty colonists objected to. The action was against monopoly and taxation, not against tea as such — smuggled Dutch tea was widely drunk in the colonies. Britain's punitive response accelerated the breach that became the American Revolutionary War. It is the clearest early demonstration that tea had become a political instrument rather than merely a beverage.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Tea · trade good · not located
- English (later British) East India Company · chartered company · not located
- London · city · United Kingdom
Evidence
Verified — Every field is supported by a cited authoritative source.
The Boston Tea Party
The destruction of East India Company tea in Boston harbour on 16 December 1773 was a protest against monopoly and taxation, not against tea consumption.
Oxford University Press · 1964 · Verified
Benjamin Woods Labaree, 'The Boston Tea Party' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964) — standard scholarly account of the Tea Act, the consignee system and the destruction of the tea on 16 December 1773
Recorded on Tea
- Tea buried in the Han Yangling mausoleum
- Tea-for-horse exchange between China and Tibet
- Tea first shipped to Europe by sea
- Parliament bans the use of printed calicoes
- Qing trade confined to Canton
- Boston Tea Party
- Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
- Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam
- East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
- The Opium Wars
- First Assam tea auctioned in London
- Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
- Treaty of Nanking
- Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
- The Great Exhibition
- The 1908 Olympic marathon fixes 26 miles 385 yards
- The first London Marathon
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- The first London Marathon · 1981-03-29
- The 1908 Olympic marathon fixes 26 miles 385 yards · 1908-07-24
- The Great Exhibition · 1 May – October 1851
- Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China · 1848–1851
- Treaty of Nanking · 1842-08-29
- Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen · 1839-06-03/1839-06-25
- First Assam tea auctioned in London · 1839-01-10
- The Opium Wars · 1839–1860